“Yes,” Stanton said thoughtfully; “I guess you have got it right. But what was his reason? He knows Crane can have him sent up for horse-stealing.”
Curtis, opening a drawer, took out a slip of paper with some numbers on it, and then laid the wad of bills on the table.
“Twenty dollars each, Merchants’ Bank, and quite clean,” he said.
“It was a five-dollar bill on the same bank we found at the muskeg!” cried Stanton, starting.
“It was.” Curtis took up the list. “Now here are the numbers of the twenty-dollar bills Morant at Sebastian got from the bank a day or two before he made the deal with Jernyngham; it was with those bills he paid him the night he disappeared.” He paused and added significantly, “I guess we have got some of them here.”
This proved to be correct when they had compared them with the list. Then Curtis leaned back in his chair and filled his pipe.
“It’s a mighty curious case,” he remarked.
“Sure,” replied Stanton. “You get no farther with it. You have points against three different men, and it’s pretty clear that they haven’t been working together. They can’t all have killed the man.”
“That’s true. Well, I’ve made a report for Regina, and they’ll keep Glover safe until we want him. I can’t tell what our chiefs will do; but as Glover’s not likely to tell them anything, I guess they’ll hold this matter over until we find out more.” He locked up the money. “Now we’ll quit talking about it. I want to give my mind a rest.”
Curtis had few of the qualities needed for the making of a great detective; he was merely a painstaking, determined man, with a capacity for earnest work, which is perhaps more useful than genius in the ranks of the Northwest Police. He could tirelessly follow the dog-sleds, sometimes on the scantiest rations, for hundreds of miles over the snow, sleeping in the open in the arctic frost. He had made long forced marches to succor improvident settlers starving far out in the wilds; in the fierce heat of summer he made his patrols, watching the progress of the grass-fires, sternly exacting from the ranchers the plowing of the needed guards; and cattle-thieves prudently avoided the district that he ruled with firm benevolence. The man was a worthy type of his people, the new nation that is rising in the West: forceful, steadfast, direct, and, as a rule, devoid of mental subtleties. He admitted that the Jernyngham mystery, every clue to which broke off as he began to follow it, was harassing him.